7 Tips for New Wizards

Posted on February 3, 2023February 25, 2023 by Ravynlea

Navigating the Spiral can seem overwhelming when you first enroll at Ravenwood Academy. There are so many things I wish I knew before I started playing. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Don’t struggle like me. In this article you’ll find gear, pets, gardening and more. Here are my top 7 tips for getting started in Wizard101.

If you have any more questions, there are tons of other Ravenwood Academy articles that can help you out!

1. SPEAK THE LANGUAGE

Wizards are so busy studying they have no time to type a world’s full name. That’s why you’ll find Zafaria being shortened to ‘zf’ and Krokotopia to ‘krok.’

Here’s a list of other common terms to help you navigate the Spiral.

Treasure cards or ‘tc’ – Cards that can be put in your side deck. These gold colored cards disappear after being cast one time.
Training Points – Points that can be spent to train spells from schools other than your own. This includes Astral and Shadow spells.
Critical or ‘crit’ – The chance a Wizard has of doing extra damage to opponents.
Block – The chance a Wizard has of blocking a critical attack.
Shadow pip or ‘shad’ – Refers to the pips required to cast shadow spells.
Max / max Wizard – This usually refers to a Wizard who is the maximum level at the time. Currently it’s 130.
Reagents – Ingredients used to craft certain items.
AOE Spells – An attack that damages all enemies.
Side deck – The part of your deck where treasure cards are stored.
Mega snacks – Rank 8/9 Snacks you can feed to your pet. This is how your pet gains talents that help your Wizard.

Look for more articles on terms in the near future from Ravenwood Academy.

2. Suit up for battle appropriately

A common problem for new Wizards is the overwhelming selection of gear. When questing, you’ll get a lot of drops from battles. Most of it won’t be useful for your particular Wizard’s school. Players often ask, “How often should I change my gear? What gear should I use? Does this hat bring out my eyes?”

Before level 30, I don’t worry about stats much. Questing with gear that drops as you go should be enough to get you through the storyline. Upgrade your gear when something drops that matches your School with higher stats. Avoid socketing jewels unless you are sure the piece of gear will be useful long-term.

If you’re looking to outshine your fellow Wizards, I’ve got some level 5 recommendations. These will serve you well until level 30.

Most of the drops are from Wizard City’s final boss, Lord Nightshade. If you’re not willing to spend time farming for the gear, it’s also purchasable from the Crowns Shop.

HAT

ROBE

BOOTS

Here is a more in depth guide on level 5 gear.

At level 30, Mount Olympus will be the next place to get gear. It’s the first dungeon in the side world Aquila. Zeus drops some quality items that most Wizards use until level 60. Cyrus Drake gives the first quest in the Aquila story line so make sure to pick that up! It’s called Quest for Glory.

The Sky Iron Hasta is a guaranteed drop from this dungeon. This wand gives Ten damage and a power pip, which is excellent for any school. The Zeus or Senator sets should be your goal. They give amazing stats for every school and add a little visual flair to your Wizard.

There are a few notable gear sets that you should go for at each level after this:

Level 60 – Waterworks or House of Scales Gear

Level 100 – Darkmoor Gear or alternatives (Exalted Krokopatra/Rattlebones)

3. Sometimes less is more!

A common mistake that many wizards make is stocking their deck with all their cards. You will waste rounds trying to find the card you need, giving the enemy the upper hand. As you get used to combat, you’ll realise you don’t need everything for regular questing.

The likelihood of you drawing the card you want increases when your deck has less in it.

Know you don’t have to add every card you’re given!

I like to have aoe spells, a few blades and some single hits for bosses or clean up. My side deck contains blades as well as monstrous tc.

If you have the gold, I’d recommend picking up some of these treasure cards. Your attacks will be significantly more effective. Different kinds of blades stack, and enchants like Monstrous increase the base damage of spells.

For example, this is my myth deck at level 27.

Main deck

Side deck

4. Save your training points

One of the most common mistakes new Wizards make is wasting your training points. You get one training point every 5 levels. The only other way to get them is by completing the Professor Zeke quests around the Spiral.

Training a ‘secondary school’ is ineffective in the games current state. If you face your own school in PvE, converts are there to help you.

Before level 50, there is little need to spend training points. The only spells I would go for with training points are Feint, Satyr and Tower Shield. If you’re looking to PvP you may need different spells. Research how to spend them wisely.

Once you unlock Celestia, it is a good option to spend your points on the sun and star school spells. You are able to train the enchants I mentioned before. Unfortunately you’ll have to have enough to train them all to get the highest one.

Unless you seek to collect moon school spells, they serve little purpose in the game. Wizards commonly regret spending their training points on them.

I recommend using a training point calculator to plan out how you are going to spend your points. Once you spend them, the only way you can get them back is with a hefty amount of crowns. Be careful!

5. BE HAPPY WITH YOUR IDENTITY!

When you first enroll at Ravenwood School of Magical Arts, you will choose your name and school. Be careful about this, you don’t get to change it later. To help you choose your school, here’s an outline of each

Ice – High health. This class is intended to be a tank. To balance this out, Ice does less damage than the other schools.

Storm – Has the highest base damage of all the schools. However, they have the least health and less accuracy.

Fire – High damage, can use damage-over-time-spells which are extremely effective in PvP as well as questing. They are powerful but have more health than storm.

Death – Considered by many to be one of the best schools for questing. They have good health and damage. Many Death spells damage the enemy while healing the Death Wizard.

Myth – Can summon lots of minions to help them in battle. Good health, damage and their spells have a lot of utility.

Life – Heals others! If you’re a support player, this is for you. You can build life to be a tank and to protect your teammates. The downfall is that they do less damage, like Ice.

Balance – An amazing utility school. Has various buffs that can be applied to others. However, they don’t have very many themselves. If you’re not intending to solo quest, I’d consider balance.

6. BE HEALTHY FOR BATTLE!

If you walk into a battle with 300 health, chances are you’re going to end up with your head spinning. You may think it’s unavoidable in dungeons where health whisps are absent. Yet, your wizard training has prepared you for this situation. You’ve got potions that will restore your health and mana.

What happens when I use them all?

You can refill your potions two different ways. The first is to play mini-games at the Fairground in Wizard City. If you don’t have time for that, you can refill them with gold from Hilda Brewer outside the Fairground.

7. You’ll need your crowns later

Crowns are valuable, you don’t want to spend them all in the first 50 levels.

I suggest investing in a mount you like since running everywhere slows down the game. If you’re struggling with questing, consider the level 5 gear above. However, all of that gear is also droppable by relatively easy bosses.

Stitching is an inefficient use of crowns at a lower level because you change your gear so frequently. Sitching and unstitching costs 100 crowns each.

This applies to pack gear as well, it gets better every 10 levels.

You’ll need crowns for chest rerolls, energy, pet training and much more! Spend them wisely

I hope these tips give you a better idea of how to play Wizard101! You can find more tips on Ravenwood Academy and at the Wizard101 Official Forums. The Official Forums are a great way to make friends and Interact with the community too. Take a look at these other great articles for new Wizards on Ravenwood Academy.

Good luck with your adventures!

School Pip Breakdown

Posted on November 8, 2022February 7, 2023 by Ravynlea

School Pips

Kingsisle is introducing a new kind of pip, School Pips, and they do everything that Power Pips do, plus a little bit more.

School Pips count as power pips, so you can use them in all the ways that you can currently use power pips. They count as power pips whenever you cast a spell from that school – kinda like Mastery, except you don’t need Mastery to do it.

To generate school pips, you will need to chase a new stat called Archmastery. Archmastery governs the rate at which your “Power Orb” fills up. When your power orb fills up, it automatically converts 1 power pip into a school pip.

Your power orb can overflow and hold up to 7 points if, for some reason, you don’t have a power pip to convert to a school pip.

As an added bonus, if your power orb has at least 3 points in it, it will convert white pips into power pips – so it will take some of the RNG out of power pip generation as well.

This feature includes changes to your Deck functionality. By default, all players will generate school pips of their own school. But KI has placed a button on your deck you can use to change your preset for what school pip you want to start generating in combat. And that setting is saved on each deck, so you can build decks with different spells inside and different presets for your school pip.

You can ALSO change your school pip setting in the middle of combat. This lets you change the next school pip to come up. Changing this setting in combat doesn’t change the setting on your deck, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to set it back.

Exclusive School Pip Costs

This new functionality doesn’t stop there. School Pips work like Power Pips but are a little harder to get and use, so KI assigned them additional value in the spell audit. And in much the same way Shadow Pips work, they assign an exact school pip cost to a spell. So you might find a Death spell that requires you to have at least one Death pip to cast it.

By now, some of you are probably jumping ahead, and based on some of the teasers you have seen so far, and you know what’s next – spells of one school that require a pip of another school. For example, you might have an Ice spell that requires a Death pip. Right now, for story reasons, KI says they plan to keep spells like this out of the mainline until players reach Novus.

Discord community member Mayonnaisinator#9263 asked where we would be seeing this new stat, and Ratbeard’s response was:
You will probably start seeing it around level 50. Wizards will have a “base” Archmastery stat that changes with level (like Pip conversion, pip chance, health, etc.) The stat will mainly be found on decks (so that should limit the number of items we will have to check if it does get added to existing items)

Additionals!

KI tried to put Archmastery in places that would not compete too hard with prior valuable stats but in enough places to give players options as to how much they want to chase ‘top stat.’ One of the four sources is ‘Jewels’ (square/tear), but IIRC there are 7 jewel slots to choose from. Assuming perfect conditions from our benchmark for the best possible power orb fill rate was 1 point per turn. Most players will not hit that. But it’s possible – you could generate 1 School Pip per turn (if you have 100% Power Pips as well)

– You can Pip Conserve off of School Pips
– School Pips can’t convert into other School Pips
– The Priority is Power Pips > School Pips > White Pips
– The Power Orb fills up faster when you have more cards in your Deck. This is not the only way to get more Archmastery rating though

Credit for the previous article goes to Discord community member Court#5444. Join our Discord for more great information about Test Ream changes!

Back To School Stitch

Posted on August 25, 2022August 25, 2022 by Ravynlea

Make sure your Wizard is looking their best for a new year of spell-slinging with Ravenwood Academy’s Back to School Stitch Contest!

Will you take home the prize for the fieriest Fire, the most electrifying Storm, or the chillest Ice of the year? Enter Ravenwood’s school-themed stitch contest to find out and win fabulous prizes!

Prepare your Wizard for fall by designing a school-themed stitch for your main character. Only one entry per person is allowed, so choose wisely!

Take a screenshot of your Wizard and post it in the Ravynwood Community’s Discord contest channel, tag us on Twitter, or email it to [email protected]. We will be looking for stitches that combine things in unexpected or rarely seen ways to show the spirit of your Wizards school. Enter by midnight PST on 9/30/2022 to qualify!

One winner representing each school will receive:

First Place: The awesome new Peppergrass Glen Bundle, a Charmers Mystical Flute, and the rare, stunning Wings of Whimsy 30-day mount!

Second Place: 10,000 Crowns and a Fogstaff!

Third Place: 10,000 Crowns

Good luck. We can’t wait to see how you embody your favorite school in Wizard101!

Christmas in July Winners

Posted on August 8, 2022August 8, 2022 by Ravynlea

Congratulations to the winners of our Christmas in July contest! Our community has some fantastic talent, and the entries were incredible! It was a struggle to choose, but the results are in. Check out the winners below.

Christmas Classic Colors

Second Place Classic Colors: Neoplasm#1571

Creative Colors

Second Place Creative Colors: Celestia Christmas by Layla#5491

Best Digital

Second Place Best Digital: Heap Christmas by Heather, Local Oracle🔮#1142

Best Physical

Second Place Best Physical: Ryan GhostBlood

Wolf of Winter Drawing

As a thanks for all of the amazing entries, everyone who entered qualified for the random Wolf of Winter drawing. The winner of the drawing is Twizard @alura_dawn!

There are so many more entries to explore, including our second-place winners! Don’t miss the Black and White “Heap” themed entry, the underwater Celestia tree, and too many other impressive creations to list! Be sure to head over to the contest channel on Discord to check them out.

Thanks to everyone that entered. If you are a winner, check your Direct Messages or email for your prize! Until next time, see you in The Spiral!

Christmas In July

Posted on July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by Ravynlea

Christmas in July Coloring Contest

Beat the heat and stay cool this July with the Ravenwood Academy Christmas In July Coloring Contest!

To Enter: First, download the Ravynwood Christmas Tree coloring page found below, then make it your own with crayons, watercolors, digital paints, or anything you can dream of!

Then, take a picture or make a copy of your image and upload it to the Ravenwood Academy contest channel on Discord at:

discord.gg/wizcommunity

If you don’t have access to the most poppin’ Wizard101 Discord server in the Spiral, you can post your image and tag us on Twitter @Ravynswood, or email it to us at [email protected]. Winners will be chosen by vote of the Ravynwood staff team for the following categories:

Christmas Classic
Creative Colors
Best Digital
Best Physical

First Place Winners will receive A Peppergrass Glen Bundle and a Reindeer Sleigh Mount.

Second Place Winners will receive 10,000 Crowns and a Reindeer Sleigh Mount.

Every entry we receive will qualify for a bonus drawing for 10,000 Crowns and a rare Wolf of Winter mount! So, do your best and have fun! Get your entry to us by August 1st, 2022 to qualify. Any Wizard could take home a prize regardless of their ability.

We can’t wait to see your dreams of winter on such a summers day!

Spiral of Gauntlets 2021

Posted on November 18, 2021November 20, 2021 by Ravynlea

Spring is here and the Ravenwood Spiral of Gauntlets is back for 2021! Every housing gauntlet in the Spiral and a few friendly PvP rings are open at this free-to-play party. Bring a new friend and show them the game, or hang out with some friends from the Ravenwood Community Discord.

Available Gauntlets

The Accursed Play Gauntlet
The Great Clock Gauntlet
Grand Tourney Arena
Sinbad and the Iron Sultan Gauntlet
Spiral Cup Gauntlet
Midnight Sun Pagoda
Winterbane Hall
Fantastic Voyage Expedition
The Doomsday Krok Gauntlet

To join the party, join one of the branches of our community. Watch for the announcement saying the house is open, then message any online staff member your True Friend Code.

After that, you will be able to port to the party house with the friends on your friend list all weekend long! Farm the Accursed Play Gauntlet for Pigsie Treasure Cards, run Winterbane for Mega-snacks, or get your Energy gear at the Spiral Cup. These are only some of the treasures the Gauntlets hold. There are many more to be discovered. Tweet us your drops and screenshots or post them on Facebook or Discord for a chance to have your image featured in a Ravenwood Events virtual scrapbook for the year. We can’t wait to see you there.

Ravenwood Academy Presents

Posted on November 10, 2021November 20, 2021 by Ravynlea

“Old is New Again” the new quest from the Wizard101 Spring Test Realm. The full quest is presented here without additional commentary. Make up your own mind, what is this hinting at? We can’t wait to hear what you think. Spoilers ahead!

Proud of our Community

Posted on June 2, 2021July 9, 2021 by Ravynlea

Ravenwood is excited to celebrate Pride month this June with our community!

We are proud of the diverse group of people that make Ravenwood Community one of the kindest, most supportive communities around.

Ravenwood vows always to be a safe place, an ally, and a home away from home for all of our Wiz-fam. When you need a friend or a soft place to land, we are here, wands ready, Feints in hand.

Join us all month long as we celebrate friends, celebrate family, and celebrate Pride. Be proud of who you are. Join our Discord server to get involved with the community and participate in events and giveaways. Every Wizard is welcome whoever, however, and wherever they are.

Over the Rainbow Contest

In honor of PRIDE 2021, we invite you to join us in acknowledging the hardships the LGBTQIA community has overcome that brought us to where we are today. To be free to celebrate life with our community and be PROUD of who we are.

The Ravenwood Community stands for positivity, inclusion, and support. It is our goal to create a haven for every Wizard. A place to feel welcome. A place for everyone to express themselves without fear. We are PROUD supporters, and we are proud to present this month’s Over the Rainbow Contest.

We want you to use your imagination to create a PRIDE-themed in-game item. It could be a housing item, a teleport effect, a mount, or even a spell. If you can dream it, you can enter it in our 2021 Pride contest.

Please post your entry in the Ravenwood Community Discord contest channel, our official Ravenwood Community Facebook Group, or by tagging @RW_Academy101 on Twitter. One entry per person, multiple entries will be disqualified.

The contest closes on June 30th. Winners will be announced by July 7th. The Ravenwood Community Staff team will choose the winners by vote, and the winners will receive:

First place: Fantastic Fairytale Bundle and a Large Housing Rainbow
Second place: 5000 Crowns and a Majestic Unicorn Mount
Third place: A Majestic Unicorn Mount

Every qualified entry will be entered into a separate drawing for a Rainbow Teleport effect!

We can’t wait to slide down the rainbow and see all of your Pride2021 dreams for the Spiral come alive.

Congrats to the winners!

First Place

First place goes to La Vie En Rose#9574. Check out their thoughtful twist on the classic Charmers Mystical Flute here!!

Second Place

Second place goes to Scion of house Cringe#4758 for their creative and colorful Pride Bundle!

Third Place

Third place goes to Kyle Storm for their unique spell ideas!!

There were so many amazing entries that we had a hard time choosing! Every one of the entries was full of heart and creativity. You can see them at our Community Discord here. Thanks to our generous sponsors at KingsIsle, instead of one runner-up drawing, every runner-up that did not win an official prize will receive a Rainbow Teleport Effect!

Thank you to everyone that entered for helping to make our community a beautiful, colorful, kind place to be, and thanks for being part of Ravenwood Community.

2021 Spell Audit Showcase

Posted on April 6, 2021April 6, 2021 by Ravynlea

This Spring, Wizard101 is bringing quality of life changes to the Spiral. Check out the updated all-one-enemy spells from the Spring 2021 Test Realm. Watch as Ravenwood Academy showcases the changes to: Sandstorm, Ra, Deer Knight, Scarecrow, Meteor Strike, Fire Dragon, Rain of Fire, Blizzard, Frost Giant, Forest Lord, Rebirth, Humongofrog, Orthrus, Mystic Colossus, Tempest, Storm Lord, and Sirens.

What do you think of the changes? Love ’em or hate ’em, let us know what you think at the Test Realm discussion on Discord, or in the comments below.

The Great Potato Takeover

Posted on April 4, 2021April 5, 2021 by Ravynlea

This April Fools Day 2021, KingsIsle and Wizard101 delighted the Spiral with a mount to be remembered. The new Couch Potato.

Wizards of every school and level came together to celebrate The Great Potato Takeover all weekend long. Potato parties continue to sprout up all over the Spiral. Baked, mashed, or fried, we advise you to join the spud side before this epic mount leaves (maybe forever) on April 29th, 2021.

These photos were taken at the scene, submit your photos of the event directly on Social media or by emailing [email protected]. This page will be updated as coverage continues all weekend at Ravenwood Academy.